WELCOMEBACK TO LEEE GAMING paladins battlegrounds Given that the two most popular shooters in the world right now are PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Overwatch, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that a developer would try to merge both of them together to see what that brings us. And Hi Rez Studios, the folks behind hero shooter Paladins, have announced they will be doing just that. Announced today at Hi-Rez Expo 2018, Battlegrounds will be a brand new mode for Paladins that will take the shooter’s Overwatch trappings and apply them to a PUBG structure and setting. The big difference? While other battle royale games usually emphasize solo play, Paladins: Battlegrounds will be looking at pushing for team play instead. That, plus the differentiation of each hero character (which means team compositions need to be varied an thoughtful) will make this different from other similar offerings. Paladins is currently available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The Battle Royale genre brewed for a few years, shifting and gurgling trying to find a stable form until Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds burst out the barrel and engulfed the world in its murderous foam. Now everyone’s drunk on last-man-standing murder and–watch out!–here comes Paladins stumbling down the digital alley, announcing plans to mix its class-based shooter action with a new Battle Royale mode. It’s shamelessly named Paladins: Battlegrounds but might at least turn up something different, as the different classes (sorry, ‘heroes’ or ‘champions’ or whatever) and team compositions mean everyone should bring more variety than the usual Royale ’em up blank slates. Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol’ breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months. Playing Paladins is like walking into a supermarket in another country: you recognise most of the stuff in there, but everything is slightly wrong. But where exotic hypermarches have tubes of Prângles, cartons of Jiffy Cakes, and peanut-flavoured toothpaste, Paladins has bizarro versions of characters from Dota 2, Team Fortress, and Overwatch. Remember the support champ Jenos who was teased as the upcoming new lad for team brawler Paladins I can now give you some in-depth details on his skillz thanks to finally having time to pick through the handy dandy patch notes! So who is Jenos, the Ascended and why is he currently descending? I remember when team-based FPS Paladins [official site] only had eight characters, when all this was fields *gestures expansively* and when Beanie Babies were a financial investment on a par with an art collection or a real estate portfolio. Cut to the present day where Beanie Babies are now Beanie Millennials drowning in debt and avocado toast, fields are something I invoke only in jokes and Paladins is welcoming a THIRTIETH champ: Jenos, the Ascended.